By Paul de Barros (Seattle Times)
Campers and early birds got a surprise at the fourth edition of the WOMAD USA festival yesterday morning, when rock star Peter Gabriel came out for a 9:30 sound check and played an impromptu, hourlong set.
Gabriel, who co-founded WOMAD in 1981, topped off the evening with an artful, carefully modulated performance of his own music, joined by his daughter, Melanie, 25, making her debut performance as a vocalist.
As the crowd at the Willowmoor stage swelled across the length of the lawn, the plaintive, hoarse-throated Englishman and his poised daughter sang a gentle rocker with a title that would move any parent — "Come Talk to Me."
It was a magical moment in a festival that lived up to and exceeded expectations.
Gabriel's morning appearance was almost as surprising as the debut of the sun, which finally blessed Marymoor Park yesterday. Attendance at the British-based world music festival — officially known as World of Music, Arts and Dance — in spite of bad weather, came close to past years' best figures.
"I don't know what else I could have hoped for," said festival artistic director Thomas Brooman, who flew in from England on Saturday after tending to another of WOMAD's multiple festivals back home. "Everything seems to be working — the visual layout, the feeling, the quality. And it's peaceful."
The grounds, festooned with colorful ethnic banners, looked as festive as a medieval fair. And programming seemed far more coherent than in years past.
Saturday three acts from three quite different countries dealt with authentic traditions rarely heard in these parts, but adding new and quirky twists.
Baul Bishwa performed the cheeky folk tunes of an itinerant sect from Bengal, the Bauls, using traditional instruments such as the unusual drum-with-melodic-string, the khamak, as well as the decidedly nonindigenous banjo.
Impish accordion player Raul Barboza from Argentina added post-modern silence and sound art over the delightfully light music of the Chamame Indians of Northeast Argentina.
To the slinky, modal melodies of the Middle East, oud player Simon Shaheen added jazz woodwinds. All was not fusion. Northumberland piper Kathryn Tickell played a haunting elegy for the dying coal-mining town of Westoe.
On the main stage Saturday night, the Neville Brothers, New Orleans funk-rockers par excellence, delivered one of their best sets locally in years.
Yesterday, the Cuban son group, La Familia Valera Miranda, got the whole crowd dancing with marvelous, two-part harmonies and some hot-shot solos on the cuatro (eight-string guitar) by Enrique Valera.
The final act of WOMAD USA, Afro Celt Sound System, brought home the message of universal understanding that this festival is about, a promise rock music broke long ago.
With thundering bodhran, talking drum, tabla and taiko drum, with roiling penny whistle, kora and Irish pipes, Afro Celt — with some help from other festival artists — asserted cultural individuality while acknowledging our electronically shrunken planet, whirling the moonlit crowd into one joyful mass.